Making Outdoor Education Possible in a School Forest

Making Outdoor Education Possible in a School Forest

by Matt Armstrong

            At the 2013 Minnesota Conference of Science Educators in Duluth, I attended a presentation about using a school forest to enhance outdoor education opportunities. Seeing as Cedar Park has been designated as a school forest by the DNR (way to go Kelli!) this seminar seemed like an obvious choice to attend. Presenters Robin Halverson and Chris Hanson teach science at Forestview Middle School in Baxter, MN. Eight years ago, the school was granted a 63-acre school forest just outside their back doors. While this is clearly on a much larger scale than what we will have at Cedar Park, the implementation opportunities will be very similar for us in the coming months and years.

            The main thing to remember when beginning a school forest is that it is an ongoing process. No one is expecting us to have a completely integrated and functioning curriculum utilizing the forest on day one. It will be a process that we will take steps at a time. Starting small and adding onto ideas over time is the best way to build up school forest usage. We can start by looking for individual activities that connect with our current curriculum. Our kindergarteners could go out and plant a tree and as a class adopt that tree. They care for it during the course of the year. They can observe it as it grows. They can name it. Then as they move into first grade, they have this tree to which they have a vested interest. I thought one of the most fascinating things Robin and Chris talked about was students being able to care for a tree all through elementary school and then when they got to Forestview Middle, they had a connection to their tree. We could try to foster the same for our students during the course of their elementary years.

            Another important aspect of a school forest is fostering a sense of community. A school forest is something that students should have a stake in; it belongs to them. If they feel ownership and responsibility for the forest, they will more actively participate, they will begin to care about what they are doing and they will make strong educational connections to the work they are doing. Along with involving students in the forest, we should also foster community support for the forest. It is on public land, after all, and the community should also feel some ownership in it. If we can get parents involved in helping us care for the forest that will help relieve some of the workload from the teachers. A school forest can be a great community builder and we should take advantage of that.

            The final point that I want to present is that we will be well supported in our implementation of our school forest. The people at the DNR that are responsible for setting up our forest will also be more than willing to help us support it. They will help us take care of the forest and they will also help us come up with ways to utilize our new forest. They have been doing this for many years and are very enthusiastic about their work. They take pride in it and we should as well. An outdoor forest makes for incredible outdoor learning capabilities and as we move forward, we can look forward to a school forest program that will nurture our students’ appreciation for the outdoors.

A Serious Talk

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How well is your PLC functioning?

Characteristics of Effective Teams

1. There is a clear unity of purpose.
There was free discussion of the objectives until members could commit themselves to them; the objectives are meaningful to each group member.

2. The group is self-conscious about its own operations.
The group has taken time to explicitly discuss group process -- how the group will function to achieve its objectives. The group has a clear, explicit, and mutually agreed-upon approach: mechanics, norms, expectations, rules, etc. Frequently, it will stop to examined how well it is doing or what may be interfering with its operation. Whatever the problem may be, it gets open discussion and a solution found.

3. The group has set clear and demanding performance goals
for itself and has translated these performance goals into well-defined concrete milestones against which it measures itself. The group defines and achieves a continuous series of "small wins" along the way to larger goals.

4. The atmosphere tends to be informal, comfortable, relaxed.
There are no obvious tensions, a working atmosphere in which people are involved and interested.

5. There is a lot of discussion in which virtually everyone participates,
but it remains pertinent to the purpose of the group. If discussion gets off track, someone will bring it back in short order. The members listen to each other. Every idea is given a hearing. People are not afraid of being foolish by putting forth a creative thought even if it seems extreme.

6. People are free in expressing their feelings as well as their ideas.

7. There is disagreement and this is viewed as good.
Disagreements are not suppressed or overridden by premature group action. The reasons are carefully examined, and the group seeks to resolve them rather than dominate the dissenter. Dissenters are not trying to dominate the group; they have a genuine difference of opinion. If there are basic disagreements that cannot be resolved, the group figures out a way to live with them without letting them block its efforts.

8. Most decisions are made at a point where there is general agreement.
However, those who disagree with the general agreement of the group do not keep their opposition private and let an apparent consensus mask their disagreement. The group does not accept a simple majority as a proper basis for action.

9. Each individual carries his or her own weight,
meeting or exceeding the expectations of other group members. Each individual is respectful of the mechanics of the group: arriving on time, coming to meetings prepared, completing agreed upon tasks on time, etc. When action is taken, clears assignments are made (who-what-when) and willingly accepted and completed by each group member.

10. Criticism is frequent, frank and relatively comfortable.
The criticism has a constructive flavor -- oriented toward removing an obstacle that faces the group.

11. The leadership of the group shifts from time to time.
The issue is not who controls, but how to get the job done.

Sources: The Human Side of Enterprise, by Douglas MacGregor The Wisdom of Teams, by Kaztenbach and Smith